Pharmaceutical costs take a toll on both providers and patients, prompting people to avoid necessary medications while taking a big chunk out of a hospital’s bottom line. Cardinal Health is fighting those problems through a seven-year-old software program that connects uninsured patients with free or discounted medications.
Cardinal’s eRecovery Onsite service saved participating hospitals more than $20 million on pharmaceutical costs in 2009, officials said.
Integrating with a hospital’s pharmacy and billing department, eRecovery Onsite matches uninsured and underinsured patients with a database of pharmaceutical programs offering free or discounted medications.
Hospitals are able to outsource the process of enrolling their patients in manufacturers’ patient assistance programs, as well as reducing the hospital’s overall drug spend by cutting the cost of medications absorbed by the hospital.
“This is a huge, untapped potential for hospitals,” said Carolyn Brown, director of marketing and product management for Cardinal Health’s eRecovery Onsite service. “They typically don’t have the people to devote to the process, so they pick maybe the top five or six programs. But there are literally hundreds of programs (and) thousands of drugs out there – drugs they would write the cost off totally.”
“We know that, particularly during tough economic times like these, many uninsured patients have trouble maintaining good health because they can’t afford their medications,” said Steve Aragona, director of pharmacy for Hackensack University Medical Center in Hackensack, N.J., in a press release supplied by Cardinal Health.
“Cardinal Health’s eRecovery Onsite service helps us fulfill our commitment to delivering compassionate, quality care to our community by helping thousands of uninsured patients access life-saving medications at little or no cost to them.”
According to Brown, pharmaceutical manufacturers often have as much trouble finding candidates for their programs as providers do in finding programs for their patients. Each program, she added, has its own requirements and guidelines for enrolling in programs, some of which are several pages long and require approvals from several departments of the hospital.
“We’ve specifically designed our eRecovery Onsite service to be an easy, no-risk way for hospitals to extend compassionate care to uninsured patients without hurting their bottom lines,” said Law Burks, vice president of marketing and product management for Cardinal Health’s Pharmaceutical Distribution business.